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Mugshots.com Writing Staff. New Orleans, LA – Jerome Morgan was recently exonerated for a 1994 murder conviction for which he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In May 1993, a gunman opened fire at a teenage birthday party in a hotel ballroom in New Orleans, Louisiana. Clarence Landry, III was killed, and Rogers Mitchell and Hakim Shabazz were both wounded. A partygoer Kevin Johnson reported to police that he chased the gunman outside and pursued him until he jumped over a fence and escaped. Police arrived on scene and locked down the ballroom, taking the names and personal information of everyone inside.

The next month, police received a tip that the shooter may have been Jerome Morgan. Detectives put together a photo array that included a picture of Morgan, who had attended the party. The photo lineup was shown to two witnesses, neither of whom identified Morgan as the shooter. Investigators then showed the photos to Shabazz, who reportedly identified Morgan as the assailant. Morgan was arrested, but charges were not brought because of the conflicting witness identification. He was released two months later.

When the murder victim’s mother learned that Morgan was released, she brought Johnson back to the police station to be re-interviewed by police. During the interview, Johnson allegedly changed his mind and fingered Morgan as the gunman. Morgan was charged with murder. During the trial, Morgan’s defense noted that he was in the ballroom after the shooting, and police recorded his information. They argued that he couldn’t have been the shooter since Johnson chased the shooter out of the hotel, yet Morgan was still in the ballroom when police arrived. In fact, one of the teens who was shot testified that Morgan removed his T-shirt after the shooting and wrapped it around the victim’s bleeding leg. The prosecution countered that the police arrived at the hotel 30 minutes after the shooting, which left plenty of time for Morgan to reenter the ballroom before the police showed up. Morgan was convicted of second degree murder following a one day trial. He was sentenced to life in prison.

After Morgan’s appeals had been exhausted, the Innocence Project New Orleans took his case. During the course of its investigation, lawyers discovered that the prosecution failed to disclose a 911 call that showed the police arrived at the ballroom and sealed it within a few minutes of the shooting, which clearly contradicted the prosecution’s claim that police arrived 30 minutes later providing Morgan sufficient time to be chased out of the hotel and return prior to police arriving. In addition, both witnesses who identified Morgan as the shooter recanted, alleging that detectives pressured them into identifying Morgan.

Not willing to concede defeat and admitting an innocent man had been convicted, the prosecution filed perjury charges against the two witnesses, claiming “They either put an innocent man in jail for 20 years or they lied to get him out.” Faced with jail time, both witnesses refused to testify at Morgan’s retrial. The prosecution then cynically argued that since the witnesses were unavailable to testify at the retrial, their original testimony during the first trial would be introduced into evidence. This, of course, would have the effect of nullifying their recantation.

As an aside, this is a stunning position to take for those charged with the fair administration of justice, not winning at all costs, since it would appear that it was the prosecution itself that concealed exculpatory evidence at trial that showed Morgan couldn’t have been the gunman since he never left the ballroom. It would appear than that it was the prosecution itself, through a lie of omission that is responsible for putting an innocent man in prison.

In April 2016, the trial judge ruled the witnesses’ testimony from the first trial would be introduced into evidence. Morgan’s lawyer’s appealed the decision to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which reversed that ruling and barred the original trial testimony from being introduced at Morgan’s retrial. Finally conceding that it had no case against Morgan, the prosecution dismissed all charges against him on May 27, 2016.

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Arrest or booked: An arrest is the act of depriving a person of his or her liberty usually in relation to the purported investigation or prevention of crime and presenting (the arrestee) to a procedure as part of the criminal justice system. The term is Anglo-Norman in origin and is related to the French word arrêt, meaning "stop".

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